When I walk in the door, you only ever greet me with a frown or a grunt. I don’t think you have ever asked me how I am or how my day was.

You don’t know what I do in my life and you show literally zero interest to want to know. I refuse to include you in my life because it’s nothing but pain, criticism, negativity, disregard and disrespect.

After all these years of abuse that has ultimately lead to you being excluded from the love and care within the rest of our family, you still play the victim and can’t admit that this is the result of your own disgraceful and inhumane behaviour towards your own family.

I wish I had had a positive, male role model in my life that I could have looked up to, but to tell you the truth, the only things that you have taught me are: to never, ever end up remotely similar to you; and to fear settling with a man who would make me as miserable as you have made my Mum. I will never forgive you for the way that you’ve broken her; the most important, most selfless person in my life. And I will never forgive you for forever shaking my trust in humankind.

So now I move on in my life to a stage where I can physically cut you from my world and when I’m gone I can’t even imagine wondering about you. The thought makes me feel slightly sad, but I have to remind myself that relationships don’t go one-way, and if you cared enough about me, you would have made the effort to make amends while I was around. I do wonder if you will regret that, though.

I feel relief that I won’t be around you, but I know that the scars and painful memories will always be there.

If I could go back in time knowing what I know now, I would know exactly how much of a fuck you are. I would know that there isn’t a single thing in this world that I could do that would make the slightest bit of difference to you, so I wouldn’t waste my time “trying to be good to avoid,” or “doing what I can to lessen the extent” of agony that you seem to enjoy inflicting. I wouldn’t listen to a single word of bullshit that comes from your ugly soul – none of what you say would effect me or influence me and my life in any way whatsoever. I would listen to every other good person that I have around me and believe that they have my best interest at heart, contrary to what you brainwashed me into believing. I would let them influence who I become because who I become is not a game to them like it is to you; their love for me is unconditional and yours is hopelessly impossible. I wouldn’t do what you say because you simply cannot be pleased, and the consequence remain the same whether I obey you or not. I would obviously still cop the consequence, but my identity would be intact; you wouldn’t shatter me. I would be me, injured, but me nonetheless. Fear would not cause me to leave or lose myself because I would trust that the people around me are strong enough to carry me through, and I would welcome them and let them in to do just that. I wouldn’t push them away due to feelings of guilt that I’m betraying you. No, I wouldn’t get stuck in that cycle of yours because I would see right through you and your manipulation.

If I could go back in time knowing what I know now, I would know exactly how much you destroy people. I wouldn’t let you do that to the people who I so dearly love and care about. I wouldn’t silently watch you tear people apart and destroy their entire being like you so naturally do. I wouldn’t ever doubt that this is so utterly evil of you. I wouldn’t ever doubt the esteem I hold for the people you do this to. I would stand in and I would stand up to you at all costs; we all would. We would all join together to fight you off – for ourselves and each other – and then we would get as far away as possible from you. I would be sure to make that happen too, and I wouldn’t feel sorry for you in the process of doing so (there’s that cycle again). My pity for you wouldn’t stop me this time. I wouldn’t consider your feelings at the expense of our own because contrary to your belief (and you really do seem to be convinced of it), you are not God to whom we must sacrifice ourselves to, you are not the King to which we must all bow down to, you are not the sun to which we must revolve around. You are only an insignificant man who WANTS to be God, who WANTS to be King, who WANTS to be the sun, but will actually never [not even mentioning your incapabilities to] be anything other than a greedy, power-control hungry parasite, so out of control of yourself that you will resort to scummy behaviours out of desperation to fulfil yourself.

If I could go back in time…
If only I could.

But I can’t actually go back in time and what’s done is done. I can only take from it what I can, and what I take is the lesson I learnt from you – of what not to be and do. And with so much anger and sadness and grief, my own expectation of compassion for others from me isn’t often easy to live up to. Sometimes it all rears its ugly head in the form of anger expressed in uncalled-for ways towards people who don’t deserve to be treated in such a way (snappy, short, impatient, passive-agressive). Some would say my reactions and emotions are nothing out of the ordinary and to not worry about it, but it’s bigger than it appears from the outside – I feel it brewing inside me. I know that if I’m not careful and constantly aware, that losing control and becoming a monster (like you) will be a fate that I would have only signed myself up for, much like you did. I need to constantly be aware. I’m choosing not to follow in your footsteps. I will not become the Monster that you are.